Page 159 - DLIS408_INFORMATION_TECHNOLOGY-APPLICATIONSL SCIENCES

Information Technology and Application

Notes 14.1 Web Portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information on the
World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way.
Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer other services such as e-mail,
news, stock prices, information, databases and entertainment. Portals provide a way for enterprises
to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications
and databases, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether.
Examples of public web portals are AOL, Excite, iGoogle, MSN, Netvibes, and Yahoo!.

14.1.1 Type of portals

Horizontal vs. vertical portal (Vortals)

Two broad categorizations of portals are horizontal portals, which cover many areas, and vertical
portals, which are focused on one functional area. Another definition for a horizontal portal is that
it is used as a platform to several companies in the same economic sector or to the same type of
manufacturers or distributors. A vertical portal consequently is a specialized entry point to a specific
market or industry niche, subject area, or interest, also called vortal.

Vertical information portal
A vertical information portal (VIP) is a specialized entry point to a specific marketplace and or
industry niche. VIP’s provide news, editorial content, digital publications, and e-commerce capabilities.
Separate from traditional vertical portals, VIP’s provide dynamic multimedia applications including
social networking, video posting, and blogging.

Task State your own views how vertical information portal differ from horizontal portal.

Personal portals
A personal portal is a site on the World Wide Web that typically provides personalized capabilities
to its visitors, providing a pathway to other content. It is designed to use distributed applications,
different numbers and types of middleware and hardware to provide services from a number of
different sources. In addition, business portals are designed for sharing and collaboration in
workplaces. A further business-driven requirement of portals is that the content be able to work on
multiple platforms such as personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and cell phones /
mobile phones. Information, news, and updates are examples of content that would be delivered
through such a portal. Personal portals can be related to any specific topic such as providing friend
information on a social network or providing links to outside content that may help others beyond
your reach of services. Portals are not limited to simply providing links. Information or content that
you are putting on the internet may create a portal in the sense of a path to new knowledge and/or
capabilities.

News Portals

The traditional media rooms all around the world are fast adapting to the new age technologies. This
marks the beginning of news portals by media houses across the globe. This new media channels
give them the opportunity to reach the viewers in a shorter span of time than their print media
counter parts.

Government Web Portals
At the end of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, many governments had already committed to
creating portal sites for their citizens. These included primary portals to the Governments as well as
portals developed for specific audiences. Examples of Government web portals include;
australia.gov.au for Australia.

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